Daily posting

As I Continue my attempt at daily posts I'd like to draw your attention to a great site that is a source of inspiration for me as a designer http://www.graphic-exchange.com/home.html. It's always a good thing to check out other peoples sites, blogs, etc... just as you are here checking out mine, you never know what you're going to find on them.

Just trying to post more often, make it worthwhile for you to stop by and take a gander. Another long week has come to an end, and even though assignments get finished, it feels like digging a hole in water, as the gap continues to be filled over and over. We've been told that this is our busiest semester of the whole course, and at this point, I'm not going to argue at all. Anyway, thats it for now...

New Semester

Almost a month into second semester at school and its amazing how busy we are already. Between school, photography gigs, work and family it gets very tiring. What makes it all worth it though is how much I love it all (busyness aside that is). Graphic Design is such an amazing field to get into, there is so much to do, so many ways it can be taken.

I stumbled across a list that all designers should know:

1) Designers are meant to be loved, not understood.
2) The purpose of design is to make the ordinary extraordinary.
3) The best designers are the ones who find good clients.
4) Design must seduce, shape, and more importantly, evoke an emotional response.
5) Good design can be planned, great design just happens.
6) Design the right things, design the things right.
7) Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Something to think about ;)

The illustration is my tribute to the X-Files show.

Snow Leopard :(

Well, here it is a month and a half since I installed Apples' new OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and man am I disappointed. It seemed good at first as it gave me back a good chunk of space on my hard-drive and sped up my start up and shut down speeds, but then the issues started. First my programs started to just shut down whenever I tried to open a file, save a file, import a file etc... sometimes more than 4 times in a row, sometimes only once. Now I've noticed that my battery life is not as extensive as it was a month ago, enough so that I can notice it being used up faster. Then there is the issue with my super-drive, it won't play burnt DVD's anymore, commercial DVD's work fine or burning to a DVD is fine but it won't play burnt ones. I am seriously considering backing up all my files and then doing a hard-drive wipe and reinstall of Leopard OS 10.5... wish I had waited to purchase this product for another 6 months or longer, just didn't expect this kind of crap from Apple.

Editorials

As I sit here writing this I am procrastinating from an editorial assignment . How ironic is it then that I write here instead. I am torn between topics that we have to choose from. The topic I wanted to do I have had to reevaluate, I suppose I could still use it, but I would now be looking at it from the other side of the fence. It would still be doable I suppose since it is a "do you" or "don't you" type assignment. I could even use the reasons for my change of heart in the editorial as well as a bit of "filler". Anyway that's enough about that, onwards and upwards eh...

So we've undertaken a really cool exercise in our illustration class, we're working on 30 weeks of illustration and so we have a new illustration due each week on top of our regular assignments. It's been a great break from the regular kinds of things we have been doing so far. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is an artist or aspires to be one. Take an hour a day or so (I usually do mine in about 4hrs) and just illustrate something, pick a topic and go nuts. It's very therapeutic and also very enlightening. You begin to see your style evolve. We do one a week but I would suggest trying to do one a day, and keep a weekly theme going or some such thing as that.
Anyway that's all I've got to say about that :)

Thanks for stopping by...

New Studies

September is almost over and College is in full swing again. The courses this year are very interesting. We've begun a series of weekly illustrations in my illustration class, based on themes that are drawn from a hat. Even though we have more hours of classes this year it seems less hectic and I wonder if that is a result of good time management or having more know how in the programs and ideas we use... possibly a combination of both. Anyway I'll leave you with my latest illustration for this week, enjoy :)

Family Travels

Woke up on Sunday feeling lazy so I opted to stay home while the rest of my family went to church. As the morning progressed, and I surfed wave after wave of the hallowed halls of the net, I decided it would be fun to take a road trip somewhere... anywhere. It didn't matter where, just go to the end of the driveway and pick a direction and go, so we did.

We packed ourselves a nice little picnic supper and headed out on our adventure. It was a really nice, and cheap, way to hang out with my family and do something together, my son and I play this game online that has a great deal of exploration in it so it was quite cool to actually do something similar in real life. 

The roads were nice and clear of traffic and the weather was beautiful. We ended up heading on a northeasterly path and stopped in Temagami, about 2hrs from our home. Beautiful little town, with nice little shops, and an old train station all painted up to the nines. We travelled a few minutes out of town and stopped at a road-side picnic spot on the lake to enjoy our supper. Afterward we just soaked in the sun and location for a little while and then headed home. 

If you've never done this kind of thing with your family, if you have one, I highly encourage it. Bring along a camera or even some drawing or painting supplies and take advantage of any nice/cool scenery you may encounter. It's a great way to get closer together and get out of the house and have a bit of exercise and adventure.